Lawmakers From Both Parties to Address 2019 March for Life

Bipartisan group of legislators will address the rally immediately before the event.

Pro-lifers attend the March for Life 2018.
Pro-lifers attend the March for Life 2018. (photo: Jonah McKeown/CNA)

WASHINGTON — The 46th-annual March for Life has announced a bipartisan group of legislators who will address the upcoming March for Life at a rally immediately before the Jan. 18 event.

Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Reps. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., and Chris Smith, R-N.J., will be joined by Democratic Louisiana state Rep. Katrina Jackson. This will be Daines’ first time addressing the March for Life.

“We are delighted to have these four pro-life champions speak at the March for Life rally. The right to life is a nonpartisan issue, and, regardless of politics, we should all unite for life and stand against abortion, the greatest human-rights abuse of our time,” Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, said in a statement to the press.

Headlining the “March for Life Rally” is conservative commentator and author Ben Shapiro, the editor in chief of The Daily Wire. Also speaking will be pro-life activists Abby Johnson and Alveda King, Archbishop Joseph Naumann, the chairman of the USCCB’s Pro-Life Activities Committee, and many others.

Last year, President Donald Trump addressed the March for Life via a video feed, becoming the first president to do so. Previous presidents have addressed the March for Life by phone call. The president’s involvement at the rally prompted Lipinski, who at the time was a vulnerable incumbent in a heated primary battle against a pro-abortion candidate, to withdraw from speaking.

In 2017, Vice President Mike Pence addressed the March for Life in person. He was the first vice president and the highest-ranking government official to do so.

The March for Life is the largest anti-abortion demonstration in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to march. It is held each year around the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that established a legal right to abortion in the United States.